Sun, 11 Nov 2007, by williamkow@yahoo.com:
Hello, I am newbie of OpenSuSE 10.3 (KDE), could you please advise me on how to install software in which the downloaded file which have extension .tar.bz2 or .tar.gz
These files are so-called zipped tars or 'tarballs'. A 'tar(1)' (tar == 'Tape-ARchive) is a collection of files, concatenated and with some error-detection header added. Run a tar through a zip program as gzip(1) or bzip2(1) and you get a file commonly denoted as .tgz, .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 Unpacking can be done in either two steps, with 'bunzip2 file.tar.bz2' or 'gunzip file.tar.gz' followed by untarring the tar file with 'tar -xf file.tar' It can also be done in one step with tar's builtin zip as 'tar -xzf file.tar.gz' or 'tar -xjf file.tar.bz2' You'd be wise to look inside the tar file first, to make sure the file have been put in their own directory, otherwise your $HOME might be flooded with dozens of files. So first: 'tar -tzf file.tar.gz' or 'tar -tjf file.tar.bz2' If the files are not in their own directory, make one first and place the tar file there before untarring. Most likely the files inside the tar belong to a program in source-code, which you have to compile before you can run the program. Luckely, most source file programs are made with the help of autoconf(1), which gives the end-user a 'configure' script to adapt the program to his own environment. Run 'configure --help' and you see several options to further adapt the program to your liking. After 'configure' has finished, it leaves a 'Makefile' script, which is used by 'make(1)' to finely compile the program into an executable. The last step is to install the executable, together with man-pages and configuration files. This can be done with 'make install', or with 'checkinstall', which makes an rpm file for you.
Thank you.
HTH Theo -- Theo v. Werkhoven Registered Linux user# 99872 http://counter.li.org ICBM 52 13 26N , 4 29 47E. + ICQ: 277217131 SUSE 10.2 + Jabber: muadib@jabber.xs4all.nl Kernel 2.6.20 + See headers for PGP/GPG info. Claimer: any email I receive will become my property. Disclaimers do not apply. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org